“Tell me about it. My signature looks like a four-year-old’s.”
We’d reached Wendy Brooks’s office building: a skyscraper close to the Freedom Tower. We told the doorman our names and no, she wasn’t expecting us. He phoned up to her, then waved us toward the elevators. I was nervous. Should we have made an appointment? Should I have emailed her? But my aunt told me to just show up. I hoped Wendy didn’t mind.
When the elevator doors opened, she was standing in the hallway with her hands clasped tightly and her hair in a lopsided bun. She hugged me before I’d even stepped off the elevator, clutching me tightly before holding me at arm’s length to look at me.
“Lottie. I’ve heard so much about you,” she said. “I wanted to meet you at your aunt’s party, but there were so many people there, and the food, and the drinks—by the time I remembered to look for you, I think you’d already gone.”
“I’m happy we’re meeting each other now,” I said, taking the flash drive out of my pocket. “I have something for you.”
She took a tiny step back as I held it out to her.
“It isn’t,” she said.
“It is,” I said.
“It can’t be.”
“She asked me to bring it to you.”
She reached out to take it but then withdrew her fingers. “I love these books so much. I loved your aunt so much.”
“I know. She wouldn’t have trusted this with anyone else.”
“Have you read it?” she asked. She still hadn’t taken it. Her fingers were outstretched and shaking.
“Yeah. It’s really good.”
“Is it better than Alvin Hatter and the Mysterious Disappearance? That was always my favorite one.”
“It’s better than all of them. Honestly. It’s the best one.”
“I knew it couldn’t be over,” she said. She took the flash drive finally. “So many people are going to love this book. Thank you for bringing it to me.”
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Thank her.”
And then we were quiet. Because, more than anything, we wanted to. We wanted to be able to thank her. And we couldn’t.
“Here, I made these for you,” Grandpa Hatter said, pushing a plate of impeccably decorated pink-and-white frosted cupcakes toward Margo. She stared at them as if not sure whether she would eat them or they would eat her.
“You made these?” she repeated after a moment of silence. “You made these pink cupcakes?”
“You’re not a very nice child,” he said.
“No, no! They look really good! I just didn’t know you baked.”
“I bake, I cook, I do whatever I want, okay? You either want them or you don’t. I don’t care either way. The garbage can is right over there.”
He gave the plate another push and busied himself with other things in the kitchen, drying an already-dry glass, wiping an already-clean counter. Margo couldn’t help but feel like he was waiting for her to take a bite. So she did.
“Oh, wow,” she said.
“Do you like them?” Grandpa Hatter asked, suddenly in front of her again, his face lit up in an expression she could only describe as utmost hopefulness.
“They’re REALLY good,” she said, her mouth still full.
“Oh, you’re just saying that,” he said, batting the air, looking about as pleased as she had ever seen him look before.
—from Alvin Hatter and the Mysterious Disappearance
10
Wendy’s office was crammed with children’s books, a floor-to-ceiling library of anything and everything worth reading. She made tea for Sam and me, and she read the first chapter of the new book aloud while we burned our tongues and were quiet and listened to Margo tell us about her brother’s deep depression, about their new lives living in the house in the middle of the woods (the safest place for them, as the Overcoat Man could not enter it), about her haphazard plans to make them some money so they could eat.
“Oh, they simply have to find their parents,” Wendy said, finishing the first chapter and closing her laptop. “It’s been such a long journey for them. They need their happy ending.”
“She won’t tell me,” Sam said. “She says I have to wait for the book.”
“And she’s right! You have to find out for yourself, or it won’t mean anything.” Wendy took a sip of her tea and put her hand on her laptop. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing this to me. I’ve been having such a hard time. She was one of my best friends.”
“And you’ve been her agent for all six books, right?” I asked.
“Seven!” Wendy corrected me, the smile on her face so wide that it became infectious in turn. “Going on seventeen years, if you can believe it.” She looked somewhere over the tops of our heads, lost in thought, then turned conspiratorial and whispered, “Did you know—I talked her out of calling him the Seersucker Jacket Man.”
“No . . . ,” Sam said.
“She had a thing with seersucker; I can’t explain it,” Wendy insisted, laughing now, pulling her laptop toward her as if it held the very reincarnated soul of my aunt.
Which . . . I mean, sort of, kind of, it did.
“Ah, this is going to stir things up. This is going to stir things up very nicely,” Wendy said, still patting the laptop, still laughing. “And don’t worry,” she continued, “they’ll want to rush this. It won’t be long at all. I’ll call the publisher the moment I’ve finished it.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
“Oh, a few months—basically the blink of an eye in the publishing world. And I’ll make sure you’re the very first one to get a copy. I know that’s what your aunt would have wanted.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, are you kidding? Thank you!” she said, lifting herself out of her chair and coming around the side of the desk to hug me again. “This is the best day I’ve had since she told me the prognosis. The best day I’ve had in a very long time.”
Sam and I left Wendy to read the rest of the book (“I’ll be in touch so soon! I’m a very fast reader!”), and I opened the envelope on the sidewalk outside. Sam pretended to be very interested in a map of the subway that someone had discarded on the sidewalk, allowing me some privacy that I very much appreciated.
Lottie,
I love that you always loved New York as much as I do. It is a place unlike any other. I have been to many cities in my lifetime, and I have loved all of them for different reasons. But New York—well, it has an energy and a history that buzz together and sweep you up and move you along at a breakneck pace, just excited to be alive and among its streets. And we share a little secret, New York and I, one that I’m slowly preparing myself to share with you.
And there is always something new to explore. Here is something we never did together: the Freedom Tower. It is just a short walk from Wendy’s office. Go to the top, Lottie. Sometimes it helps to see things from a different perspective. (My apologies if you’re already back in Connecticut, but I imagine you’re barely out of Wendy’s office. I hope she’s well. I hope you liked the book.) Love, H.